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Comments
Xingbao have a good selection of buildings that are original designs, and not stolen from the designers.
Firaz Abu jabber's vehicles are great too
http://www.ebay.com/itm/XingBao-04001-Aliens-Building-Blocks-Set-Toys-Bricks-2020Pcs-DHL-Free-Shipping-/172720156422?_trksid=p2385738.m2548.l4275
The IP belongs to the Giger estate, not the "designers". Seems like Amador&Ramon are just begging to get sued.
- match Lego's new releases
- copy Lego's existing offerings
- copy Lego's past catalogue
- its own sets (truly original or copied)
From what I see, the first has the highest priority. It is trying to achieve "same-day" parity with Lego. It has succeeded for some, and the time gap is ever shrinking. But this has taken a toll on its other projects.
Its production capabilities also seem to have shrunk -- half allocated to XingBao now? By observing authorized sellers who update their inventories, many older products are now OOS. Not necessarily EOL, just OOS. When will they be re-printed? Don't know. Will they be re-printed? Don't know. Of course, stocks are still available in the market (could be for years, especially for the not so popular stuff).
In fact, many of the Modular Buildings are now OOS. I find it hard to believe that they will be discontinued (since they should be popular with AFOLs), so it must be that Lepin has a production constraint and is prioritizing other stuff.
And after making a big splash last year, Lepin is now 'just a thing'. TLG continues to do well. The secondary market has not crashed. The sky has not fallen.
Due to pent-up demand, people were willing to pay quite high price for discontinued sets, but they are really US$35 sets. The quality must be judged in that context.
Lepin has gotten more selective on discontinued sets. For some "obscure" ones such as Eiffel Tower and Taj Mahal, Lepin seems to make just one small run. They sold out and that's it. This tells me that there isn't much demand for them. (This is my observation, and it may be biased or wrong.)
Let's not forget the primary market for Lepin sets is Asia, which is also the reason why Lepin clones sets that we would call cheap, like small 20 Dollar sets and the like, which are much more expensive as original Lego in Asia. We have not the slightest clue how Lepin is doing in their primary market, do we?
The AFOLs buying (Lego-EOL'ed) Lepin sets via AliExpress are just a tiny fraction of the market for them and one that Lepin might not be very interested in in the first place.
Having said that, I was always operating under the thought that "come September 2017, Lego COULD and SHOULD shut Lepin down." So I viewed Lepin as a "get it now" type of thing. Not just for me, but for everybody. Well it's October 2017, when are we going to get some news on the lawsuit?
Either TLG will buy them out, depending on the size of Lepin within China, or TLG will go into business with Lepin, Lepin producing Lego for sale within China.
Why would Lego do that? They have a proprietary factory in China and do not need Lepin to manufacture anything.
The next step 10 to 15 years down the line would be further expansion into India.
https://www.shoplepin.com/
https://www.legolepin.com/
http://www.lepinblock.com/
And other shopify ones like
https://brickfantasy.myshopify.com/
https://www.rosegal.com/other-toys/jjrc-h67-flying-santa-claus-rc-drone-rtf-headless-mode-one-key-return-plug-in-block-model-1449921.html
If someone wanted to commercialize something I did, I wouldn't care. Hell, I'd be flattered. Someone else making money from it wouldn't be costing me ANYTHING, so why would I be upset about it?
There's also just the general negative feeling that comes with being taken advantage of. When somebody puts a digital model file or building instructions for one of their models online, they usually intend for it to be freely available to everybody. For another company to exploit their generosity by taking that design, claiming it as their own, and profiting from it is a serious breach of trust.
And finally, especially in the age of the internet, art theft in general is a real problem, commercially or non-commercially. Artists are forced to always be on the lookout for other people using their art without permission or attribution. In a worst case scenario, breaking the chain of attribution makes it unclear who originated the design in the first place. What happens when somebody who never encountered the MOC except as a Lepin set sees a picture of the original out-of-context? They may not even give it a second glance, since there's nothing making it obvious that it's an original creation. The artist may not lose money in this way, but they miss out on getting credit for their own creativity. Only a total dumbass would think that a lack of financial harm somehow makes that perfectly okay.
Just because you'd be flattered by a company exploiting your creativity and taking credit for your creations doesn't mean other, more self-respecting artists should feel the same way.
I have to disagree with your second point. Lepin (or whomever) commercializing it doesn't remove the ability of people to take the freely available instructions and build it. They've lost NOTHING. How is anyone taken advantage of?
If people are concerned about "getting credit" for something - maybe they could create a sort of..."Lego MOC original creation certification" website (wordy title, I know - but go with it for now). In this model - the operator(s) of the site could serve as sort of a "idea clearinghouse" - where people submit the MOC they want to register as their original, and the site could certify it and create a public record (sort of like how the patent system works in the US). Same site could have options to publish the instructions for free, or for a small fee (at the discretion of the submitter), etc. Fund the whole thing with advertisements, or membership fees, or submission fees, or whatever. See there? all of the sudden, a problem becomes a business opportunity. And if someone wants to take this idea and run with it and make a million dollars, I will not be the slightest bit offended or unhappy that I was taken advantage of (:
It is COMPLETELY UNREALISTIC to expect to post something on-line for the "public good" and expect it to remain pure and unfettered, as if we're living in a utopian paradise. You can wish for it all you want to, but that is simply not how the real world works. Better to create a SOLUTION for a problem than pine away about wishing the problem didn't exist.
Following your arguments, someone could easily take an article published on the internet and sell it on as an ebook, written by themself for profit. They have done no harm to the original author, since they weren't making money from it. Similarly, someone could download all the instructions of LEGO's website and sell them on a CD, claiming they are doing no harm as they were being given away free anyway so LEGO makes no loss.
But why would anyone wanting to copy stuff abide by this. This is no different to now, it only works if people copying stuff agree that the original author has rights. If they don't agree with that, they will just steal designs anyway.
Completely true. The point of what I suggested is not to prevent people from copying stuff. It would be to serve as an accepted source of truth for the origination of the stuff, so that people could "get credit" for being the original author and/or original authorship could be determined/verified.
It wouldn't keep anyone from copying something and making a million dollars from it. But it would, once such a service became sufficiently "established", serve as evidence for who originally created that something. For example - if I registered my MOC on the site today, and in 8 weeks, Lepin is selling it, anyone who wanted to could verify my claim as original author by using the site.
The only way to keep someone from "stealing your idea" is to not tell anyone your idea. Most people will find that unsatisfactory.
It's very telling that your only solutions to the problem involve the ARTISTS taking on additional burdens, rather than, say, the actual thieves in this scenario suffering any kind of repercussions for their reprehensible actions. We as AFOLs may not have a lot of power to fight Lepin through the court system, but we can sure as hell use our voices to condemn them and to remind AFOLs who buy Lepin products how their thoughtlessness harms our community spirit. wooootles ended up taking down all his LXFs after one of his MOCs was stolen. Previously, AFOLs could build many of his creations for themselves with relative ease. But Lepin's selfish actions cost us that opportunity. A great deal of trust was lost. And that was just the start. Do we really want to promote a culture where the best LEGO artists start withholding their work or hiding it behind paywalls because they're afraid it will be stolen otherwise? And what if they take these precautions and it gets stolen anyway? A climate where any great work you do will be taken from you unless you dedicate exponentially more effort to protecting it is toxic to the spirit of creation.
We can't talk about knock-offs like this as if they are some kind of neutral force of nature with no accounting for their actions. They are an organization of people who consciously steal the work of artists and designers in order to make an easy profit. They deserve to be shamed for that, as do buyers who brush aside all these violations because they're too selfish to accept the possibility of not owning all the cool things they want that would take too much money or too much effort to obtain legitimately. And in no circumstance should any of us be making boneheaded assertions that artists should be grateful or complacent about their work being stolen because they weren't commercializing it themselves anyway.
You can either accept that, and look for some other solution, or you can not accept it, and do nothing. Or, as you suggest, you can talk about it publicly, across your fingers and hope for the best. Personally, from what I can tell, that approach is not leading to satisfying results for people. Maybe it is....but it doesn't seem that way.
Some create.
Some take.
Some profit.
Those are the facts, and they're not going to change - regardless of what one wants to accepts as true.
There's nothing unreasonable about being upset or angry that something you worked hard on is being exploited by a cheap, lazy, and unethical company that never sought your permission or made any effort to compensate you for your designs. It's the same reason an artist would be pissed off about somebody selling T-shirts decorated with a painting or drawing they made and claiming the design as their own. It doesn't matter if you were planning to commercialize the design, it's still theft of your hard work. Is that really so hard to understand?
But I will ask you this....suppose someone posts their MOC on-line, and someone else copies it and makes money from it without crediting that person. And let's suppose that pisses off that person, as well as a bunch of other people.
How many times does that need to happen before the rational thing to do is to take a step BEYOND caring about it, being angry about it and talking about it? And what do you think that step should be?
So the situation is no different to now. Any author whose design gets ripped off by Lepin or other fakers can just point to their creation on a timestamped website like Eurobricks or MOCpages for proof that they were the original author.
All that said, I also don’t think anger or indignation has to be backed by actions to be valid. Sometimes the most important step is just to accept that when bad things happen it’s OK to be upset about them. You can accept those feelings without forgiving the actions against you that made you feel that way.
I guess so. To to quote of the greatest lines in movie history, "Would it help?" It doesn't seem to ME that it is helpful to be angry about stuff that is largely out of your control. But do some find it cathartic? Quite possibly.
The other flaw with such a website is more than one person may have an idea for a set based on something they have seen, and come up with very similar MOCs. There's a rather obscure website where people submit their ideas for sets to a manufacturer with hopes that the set will someday be produced, and there has been at least one case where a person felt their design was ripped off by the site operators. The incident still haunts the website.
Generally speaking, people who are not concerned about IP theft are the ones who have not ever created anything worth stealing.
The only way to fully protect against IP theft is to not reveal your IP to anyone. Most people do not find that satisfactory, nor does it provide them with any kind of "getting credit".
If you put your IP out into the wild, you have to accept the fact that someone, somewhere, may use your IP with your permission, let alone provide you with credit or compensation. If that's a concern, best move is to not put it out into the wild.
As for Lepin and Lego.....even if Lego wins its lawsuit (and I certainly hope it does), all Lepin has to do is arrange for some new corporation to come along and do what it is doing - and Lego will have to start all over again. At the end of the day, when you're dealing with "unfair actors" (and China certainly counts as one in this regard), you're not going to win by attempting to turn them into "fair" actors. You may as well try to domesticate the zebra. The best Lego could do here is pull all of its resources out of China entirely, refuse to ship any product there, and let the chips fall where they may. If it is unwilling to accept those consequences, then it should AT LEAST include, in every single package they sell, a flyer expressing its view toward Lepin, warning its customers off from buying Lepin, etc. etc. (create maximum anti-brand awareness).
That won't change anything. They can still make fake LEGO without LEGO presence in China. In fact, it would be even worse, since if LEGO had no presence whatsoever in China, then they would lose their well-known trademark recogition.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news-room/2017/november/lego-trademark-china
Then Chinese company could start using that too.
Advertising the existence of Lepin in every LEGO set would be a terrible idea. Anti-brand awareness is brand awareness, telling people that cheap alternatives of LEGO sets exist and giving them the company name to search for.
As I mentioned, there are already websites available for posting MOCs to get credit for the idea. It does not always work out.
As for pulling out of China, in what way does ceding the entire market to the competition benefit LEGO? Is it because LEPIN would no longer have to worry about keeping their prices low, or because LEPIN could relax their quality control?
Negative ad campaigns may work for politicians, but in the real world they would only serve to let buyers know that the target of the ad is available, cheaper, and of high enough quality to scare LEGO. It would indeed create maximum LEPIN awareness, the exact opposite of the desired effect.
OK - status quo. Do nothing different and wait for different results.
I didn't suggest that it would change anything in terms of fakes. I was suggesting that Lego may as well stop giving them money.
Yep. Better to let people find it on their own, rather than at least trying to control the message.
All in all, you're right. There is absolutely nothing that can or should be done. Better to just sit back, do nothing practical, and wait for change.